New Hampshire Libraries Band Together for their Implementation of Koha with ByWater Solutions

New Hampshire Libraries Band Together for their Implementation of Koha with ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that The Monadnock Library Community of New Hampshire has partnered with them for the installation and support of the community version of the Koha integrated library system.

The MLC is comprised of three libraries in New Hampshire: the Fitzwilliam Town Library of Fitzwilliam, the Jaffrey Public Library of Jaffrey, and Gay-Kimball Library of Troy. Among the reasons for the creation of the MLC were the library’s common technology needs, collaborative spirits, and legacy ILSs.

The three libraries will be implemented on a union catalog, which will allow them to share their resources seamlessly in true open source fashion. The Koha catalog is extremely scalable over time, so new additions to the community will have a seamless integration once the catalog is up and running.

Susan Massin, Director of the Fitzwilliam Town Library commented on the MLC’s choice to implement Koha with ByWater Solutions; “I am very excited to partner with the Troy and Jaffrey public libraries to implement this ground-breaking open-source system that when completed will include a vastly expanded catalog available both in the library and online.‚Äù

Susan continues; “I was looking for a company that was dedicated to the principles of open source and was also able and willing to provide hands-on assistance to us throughout the process.The flexibility (and patience!) in setting up an affordable pricing structure that could be shared by our partner libraries was a huge factor. A recommendation from Stephanie Chase (Library Journal Mover and Shaker and founder of the Green Mountain Library Consortium) brought ByWater to my attention, but the responsiveness and enthusiasm shown by the staff of ByWater since our first phone call were the deciding factors.‚Äù
About The Monadnock Library Community:
Named after nearby Monadnock Mountain, the MLC is made up of New Hampshire Libraries with the common goals of collaboration, learning and adoption of open source software for the benefit of their patrons and communities.

About Koha:
Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha’s impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circ, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies–XHTML, CSS and Javascript–making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visitwww.koha-community.org

About ByWater Solutions:
With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: bywatersolutions.com